[Android] Smouldering Durtles (v1.2.0) - native app with offline lessons and reviews, plus themes and script-like features!

[VannHarl]

@Joeni

I’ve merged in a pull request previously made to Flaming Durtles that adds a toggle to show alternative meanings and readings as a toast while doing reviews.

While I’m here today: in v1.0.5 you’ve introduced the alternative meanings/readings toast, which is very helpful. Thank you for that because it helps not to get stuck on one meaning/reading alone. It does seem to have a different display duration than the existing SRS up/downgrade toast, though. When both toggles are active, both toasts appear simultaneously (as they should) with the SRS one being on top. After ~ 2 secs, the SRS one disappears, making meanings/readings slide up the screen, only to disappear about a second later. I think it’d be nicer if both disappeared together after 2 secs, in order to proceed faster. And since the toast seems to always lists all meanings regardless of which one was entered, omitting "Alternatives: " could save some screen space and avoid some wrapping

One might even wonder if the big empty space below the answer box could be a better place to display such hints rather than right on top of all the main display and control elements. These are minor cosmetic aspects, though. And I suppose some other users have opinions about that, too.

Cheers!

[TsubasaJM]

Thanks for fixing the notification bug and all your good work @Joeni !

In the new release did you do anything with font size? I have Android setup to show text larger because of bad eyesight, and in 1.0.6 the text seems really small now compared to before…

[Hubbit200]

@VannHarl

One might even wonder if the big empty space below the answer box could be a better place to display such hints rather than right on top of all the main display and control elements.

Very much agree - especially the “close enough” hints that pop up, depending on the device, lots of times almost completely cover the next word that appears, meaning you have to wait until the hint goes away to continue. The big empty space underneath definitely seems like it could be a better place to display them!

[Joeni]

@VannHarl

Awesome! This is a big help! Getting the colors back to what they were before was particularly tricky due to the sliders being less than exact. This should take care of that

One of the features I’m looking to implement soon is having two things:

Have the RGB HEX display be an input too, so you can use exact values, and also some method of dumping theme settings in via file directly.

One of the things I whipped up recently was a simple GUI for doing theme creation, it allows live manipulation of the arrays used for the themes, organised into buttons that match the colour customiser UI:

An example of one of those things I do often: spend more time creating a tool for a task than it takes to manually do the thing, but it’s been useful for tweaking and creating without having to remember which bits of the array refer to which elements.

@VannHarl

think it’d be nicer if both disappeared together after 2 secs, in order to proceed faster.

I’ll see what tweaking I can do with that

@VannHarl

And since the toast seems to always lists all meanings regardless of which one was entered, omitting "Alternatives: " could save some screen space and avoid some wrapping

That’s a good shout - I’m afraid I’ve got no view of the logic behind it, I simply pulled the changes in and tested them, but I’d imagine it wouldn’t be hard to tweak it to remove from the array of alternatives the answer that was given.

@TsubasaJM

In the new release did you do anything with font size? I have Android setup to show text larger because of bad eyesight, and in 1.0.6 the text seems really small now compared to before…

Hmm, no - I didn’t make any manual tweaks to the text size, but it may have been a knock-on from something else. Is this everywhere or in particular places?

@VannHarl

One might even wonder if the big empty space below the answer box could be a better place to display such hints rather than right on top of all the main display and control elements.

You’d get the issue there with it being on top of elements when the info stuff pops up following an incorrect answer. I’ll be thinking about it, but it’s a bit hard to find a good place:

Left or right and stuff like the alternatives box is way to wide. Below and those things would cover up buttons - in fact, I’ve noticed that the alternatives one DOES cover up the top left and right buttons and so I need to look at that.

Having them appear on top of the toolbar might work, not in the display space at all - you’re unlikely to need to hit any of the buttons there in the couple of seconds after putting an answer in, so I don’t see any harm.

I dunno, I’ve got some tweaking to do to find a good solution and it’ll mean splitting the toast system into a few different cases outside of styling alone, because the tutorial and helper toasts sit in that same alignment too.

[simias]

I noticed the reduced text size on the “^apprentice II” (and friends) SRS level up message text is smaller.

The dashboard also seems to have been tweaked a bit (unless I messed with a setting by mistake). Here’s an old FD screenshot:

Here’s SD 1.0.6:

Notice how the “you are level x. Your time on this level is y days” and all other text at the same pt size is smaller on SD.

The rest of the text seems untouched however.

It’s not a huge difference but I noticed it as well.

[gijsc1]

@Joeni

You’d get the issue there with it being on top of elements when the info stuff pops up following an incorrect answer. I’ll be thinking about it, but it’s a bit hard to find a good place:

You could add a little bit of extra space between the line with SKIP and UNDO in it, and the line with the main word, possibly as a setting so people who don’t want/need it are not affected. That would move everything down a bit, which is mostly empty space anyway.

[Joeni]

@simias

I noticed the reduced text size on the “^apprentice II” (and friends) SRS level up message text is smaller.

Ah yes! You’ve nailed it, it’s related to that.

I’d reduced the toast fond size to try and alleviate the issue of it overlaying other stuff, but the adding was unaffected despite all my tweaking and I thought I changed it back. I just have inadvertently changed this line too:

The AppCompat.TextView is what controls the font size for those bits of the UI.

I’ll push a quick update out to fix that and the other few formatting errors that people have pointed out

[Joeni]

@gijsc1

You could add a little bit of extra space between the line with SKIP and UNDO in it, and the line with the main word, possibly as a setting so people who don’t want/need it are not affected. That would move everything down a bit, which is mostly empty space anyway.

That’s not a bad shout - though ultimately I believe the biggest space saver would be to remove the big yellow overlay and have the toasts in lessons and reviews just pop up as text above the main word - that most of the issue is caused by the overlay, not the message.

It would also make it somewhat more elegant - I need to do some testing, as well as set up a test method to actually get them to pop on on demand, as I’ve not got one for that yet, haha

[VannHarl]

@Joeni

Have the RGB HEX display be an input too, so you can use exact values, and also some method of dumping theme settings in via file directly.

That’s great to hear! And seeing as you’re working on theming, at some point could you perhaps also consider allowing us to choose the colors of the (currently b/w only) boxes that tell whether it’s a meaning/reading/vocabulary quiz.

@Joeni

That’s a good shout - I’m afraid I’ve got no view of the logic behind it, I simply pulled the changes in and tested them, but I’d imagine it wouldn’t be hard to tweak it to remove from the array of alternatives the answer that was given.

Oh, no! I only wanted to suggest omitting the "Alternatives: " string from the toasts that show them because it is such a long word. Creating a logic that filters out the current answer sounds like overkill to me. Having all meanings/readings shown is totally fine, IMO.

@Joeni

You’d get the issue there with it being on top of elements when the info stuff pops up following an incorrect answer. I’ll be thinking about it, but it’s a bit hard to find a good place

I’m sure there’s quite a number of other things that come into play here. I just wanted to bring the toast overlay thing up, not ask for a quick fix. With some input here and there, I’m sure a good solution can be found in due time.

Another idea could be to leave the toasts where they are - and instead shift the entire display/input/control area down towards the unused space? @gijsc1 also suggested something similar, I believe.

Also there’s another placement issue you might not be aware of. As you can see in the screenshot with the toasts above, the info line displaying the “review counter” (33/44 above) and the current SRS level occupies the same row as the control buttons (SKIP and UNDO in my case). I currently have no screenshot to show you, but sometimes the counter text on the left becomes too long, for example when it says “Wrap-up” next to it. That in turn causes an overlap with the top-left button text. So it’d probably make sense to consider a dedicated “status” row at some point …

Cheers!

P.S. Considering most of us pay for WK (and probably spent money on other resources as well) I think it wouldn’t be wrong to make the app donationware, open a Kofi or similar. I for sure wouldn’t hesitate to send you a

[Joeni]

@VannHarl

at some point could you perhaps also consider allowing us to choose the colors of the (currently b/w only) boxes that tell whether it’s a meaning/reading/vocabulary quiz.

I suspect I could do that, with a bit of time - I’ll pop it into the backlog to take a look at

@VannHarl

Creating a logic that filters out the current answer sounds like overkill to me.

Have edited alternatives out, but in fact, the logic for that working took my about 5mins (and by me, I mostly mean ChatGPT) and I’ve got that working fine. Currently tinkering with also clearing out repetition in the form of seeing things like “the distant future” and “distant future” which just makes the box wider and increases the chance of wrapping around without any learning benefit.

@VannHarl

Also there’s another placement issue you might not be aware of. As you can see in the screenshot with the toasts above, the info line displaying the “review counter” (33/44 above) and the current SRS level occupies the same row as the control buttons (SKIP and UNDO in my case).

I had commented on that above, in fact, hehe - it’s definitely non-ideal in the current placement and high on my list to look at

@VannHarl

I think it wouldn’t be wrong to make the app donationware, open a Kofi or similar. I for sure wouldn’t hesitate to send you a

If it’s something you and others feel passionate about, I’m not averse to popping a donation link on the about page or something - would just feel a bit odd doing so when none of the other devs do

[simias]

Since you’re tinkering with alternate meanings, one thing that can also help is to complete the WaniKani meanings with that of kanjidic. The rationale is that the meanings taught by WK are often incomplete, and sometimes entirely different from the traditional meaning of the kanji and I find that the additional meanings sometimes bring useful nuance.

Here’s what it looks like (additional_meanings being the meanings in kanjidic not present in WaniKani by default): https://svkt.org/~simias/additional.json

For instance for 出 we have:

  {
    "id": 483,
    "kanji": "出",
    "wk_meanings": [
      "Exit"
    ],
    "additional_meanings": [
      "Leave",
      "Go Out",
      "Come Out",
      "Put Out",
      "Protrude"
    ]
  },

I think the “go out” meaning is pretty useful because it does come up a lot in vocab containing the kanji.

Meanwhile a kanji like 莫 is taught with a completely non-standard meaning in WK:

 {
    "id": 9028,
    "kanji": "莫",
    "wk_meanings": [
      "Endless"
    ],
    "additional_meanings": [
      "Must Not",
      "Do Not",
      "Be Not"
    ]
  },

Admittedly it’s more important in my anki deck because I do meaning → kanji instead of the other way around like in WK, and there are many kanji that have exactly the same (or extremely close) meaning on WK, so the extra nuances are often helpful.

[Joeni]

@simias

Since you’re tinkering with alternate meanings, one thing that can also help is to complete the WaniKani meanings with that of kanjidic.

Hmm, while that’s technically feasible, it would take some heavy additions to the API tasks. It would require there being an API available that provides all these alternatives (which I can see there may be in https://kanjiapi.dev) and then a merging of additional_meaning data from WaniKani with that of KANJIDIC for every kanji in the subject database… which would get over-written every time there’s a subject data change, I suspect, so it would be pretty hard to manage.

I suspect I could probably do it, given time, but it’d probably be a bit of a pain.

[Joeni]

FEEDBACK REQUEST: ALTERNATIVE MEANING TOASTS

Okay, so I’ve been tinkering with this a bit and the most elegant solution I’ve found so far is adding a small amount of padding between the button of the subject and the buttons, this allows enough room for the alternative meanings toast to appear without overlapping anything and gives it plenty of room if there’s multiple alternatives.

I personally prefer the toast being simple text without all the additional background and stuff, but that’s just me and so I wanted to float it with the community. I’d do the same thing, if people like it, with the SRS toasts, making them pop up above the subject - no padding needed there as they’re not wide.

The changes I’ve made to filter out the duplicated “the distant future” vs “distant future” alternatives in the list (which I don’t feel add much to understanding) should keep the list of alternatives small and readable, I think:

Obviously captured this just after doing 未来, so ignore the subject being different, haha

Do we like this as a solution?

• Yes
• No
• I have a different suggestion (please elaborate)

[VannHarl]

I like this But there will still be wrapping going over the DON’T KNOW button, right? Because some of the alternative meaning strings seem quite long. This post shows a way to export WK data quickly into a CSV via the browser console. This could provide an idea what the longest alternative meaning string currently is.

[Joeni]

Given the font size, it would have to wrap to three lines to go over, which seems unlikely. As it stands the string already gets cut off at two, so I don’t see it being a major issue.

I’ll give it some testing with a custom string and see

[polv]

Be careful with vocabulary’s meanings, though. I think Jotoba also has official API.

[simias]

The XML file with like 5k kanji is 2MB and can easily be pre-filtered to only contain the kanji in WK, I thought that could be bundled with the app.

But I don’t even know if it’s a good idea, I just wanted to mention it.

[lamby]

forgive me for the silly question (and my first forum post)-- since SD can now distinguish the new kana only vocab separately unlike FD which counts them as radicals, is it possible anywhere in the settings to hide or skip the new kana vocabulary? I couldn’t find anyone mentioning this in the thread, so I’m sorry if this has been asked before, or if it’s simply not possible. durtles settings are wonderfully robust but this also makes me wonder how much I’m unaware of. thank you so much for your hard work, especially getting this to work on the play store! much appreciated.

[flomo]

Hello!
Thank you for maintaining this app! Just moved from FD.
What do you think about some settings/updates for the toast notifications ? Right now it shows on top of the next question so I’d love to be able to change its position (anchored to the bottom for instance), change its duration, maybe even hide it on tap.

[AllieKatte]

Since they dumped 10 new kana-vocab items yesterday, I had 10 in the lesson queue this morning and so I was able to test the limiter setting. However, even though I had the kana-vocab limit set to 9, it still queued all 10 vocab lessons.